Review Details

There aren't many of these still floating around new since Orion discontinued them. You should grab one of these while you still can. I've had mine almost a year now and image with it regularly. I don't see any color aberration from the corrector plate at all. For optics at f/5.3 you'd think you'd need a field flattener, but you don't. I have only a very tiny bit of coma (elongation) in one corner of my images (APS-C sized chip). You'd think it was a high end APO based on the sharpness of the images. It consistently outperforms my smaller Takahashi refractor in terms of resolution and sharpness (it should - to some degree-, it's a smaller scope). A testament to the Mak-Newt optical design. I'm really surprised this design isn't more popular. I've owned dozens of scopes, and I've never gotten the sharpness on globular clusters or lunar features that this scope produces.

The only weak link was the focuser. It's usable, but I did not like the image shift when I locked it down. I used it satisfactorily for a few months, but eventually I upgraded the focuser myself.